A picture rarely stands alone. While this is obvious in contexts like the internet, film, and magazines, art history has long struggled to move beyond the formula one work = one author. Strategies of singularization and the dominance of “the work” remain influential – not only in the art market. Even in image studies, for example in the writing of Gottfried Boehm, the sheer abundance of images has often been treated as a backdrop rather than a subject of theoretical inquiry.
The photobook, by contrast, embodies a process of desingularization. It presents the image in the plural, integrates context and paratext, frees the individual image from isolation, and generates new semantic orders. As a medium, it activates the cultural techniques of both book and image.
Although the photobook has existed since the early days of photography, it has rarely been the focus of sustained theoretical investigation. This project aims to change that, approaching the photobook as an iconic and narrative medium. It examines the visual plural in photobooks from phenomenological, epistemological, and aesthetic perspectives.
Building on Boehm’s seminal question, “How Images Generate Meaning” (2008), the project asks how sequences of photographs within a book are structured to create meaning. Five key aspects guide the analysis: repetition, comparison, affect, fiction, and movement. Each chapter combines theoretical reflection with concrete case studies.
The project has also generated a range of activities and publications. A workshop held at KWI led to the 2021 special issue “Turn the Page! New Perspectives in Photobook Research”, in the journal Fotogeschichte (edited by Anja Schürmann and Steffen Siegel). Additionally, it inspired events such as the Photobook Quartet+ at the International Photo Scene Cologne, hosted at KWI in 2020.
In these ways, the project contributes to a deeper understanding of both the visual plural and the contemporary artistic photobook, bridging a historical divide that Lessing identified when distinguishing between literature as temporal art and painting as spatial art.
Contact: Anja Schürmann